Jobless Americans have collected more than half a trillion dollars in benefits over the past five years.

State and federal unemployment insurance programs have cost roughly $520 billion, according to a Congressional Budget Office report released Wednesday.

The price of continuing this safety net will be the subject of intense debate in Congress as lawmakers decide whether to extend the deadline to file for federal benefits beyond year's end as part of the fiscal cliff negotiations. Extending federal jobless insurance next year could cost as much as $30 billion, according to the CBO analysis.

The federal government has spent far more on unemployment insurance in recent years than it had in previous economic downturns because of the unprecedented response to the Great Recession. Federal benefits were extended to a record 99 weeks in November 2009. That safety net was extended multiple times until this year, when Congress extended the deadline to file but shortened the duration the jobless can receive checks.

Here's how it works now: The jobless generally receive up to 26 weeks of state benefits and then shift to federal emergency unemployment compensation, which is broken into four tiers and lasts up to 47 weeks. There is a separate federal extended benefits program, which provides up to 20 weeks, but only New Yorkers are eligible for it at this time.

And how much had been collected from employers (and indirectly from employees) for so-called “unemployment insurance”? I suspect it’s probably nowhere near the number above, but still, what do you want - to pay unemployment insurance taxes and have the gummint spend it on foo stams for the never employed? Find a better target, how about foo stams?

‘You are WHAT! How are we going to feather bed all those 60 - 70 Grand per year jobs for sweeping g the streets that never get swept if you put a bunch of unemployed workers in those rolls.’

Never going to happen. Most states have UE insurance at $300 - $450 PER WEEK and that is for people at the HIGHEST earning level. People who made Seventy Eighty and 100K per year or more are sitting on UE because the available jobs are NOTY for them. They can not get hired even if they wanted them because the employer knows the second they get a better job or one in their field, they are gone.

Cold hard fact time. THERE ARE NO JOBS FOR MANY UNEMPLOYED!

9
posted on 12/01/2012 9:02:49 PM PST
by Jim from C-Town
(The government is rarely benevolent, often malevolent and never benign!)

Terrible. My daughter’s division closed and she’s already out looking for work tho she’s still collecting her regular salary for months before unemployment bennies kick in. Conceivably, it might take a long time to find work, and those bennies would be a godsend. Hoping and praying that’s not the case. But many good people really try to find work and for sure they deserve unemployment while they search.

Yes..... the American public made a choice. They smoked the hopium and are high as a kite. Hurting the millions who knew better. I know older folks...woman especially that are working full time to find a job but can’t.

You may like Romney / Ryan or not but repeatedly. Romney stated...”It doesn’t have to be like this”

Ryan...”This isn’t what a real recovery looks like”

It’s the taxes,uncertainty over Obamacare and overregulation keeping them on food stamps and unemployment. Not the desire to sit around.

And this is why the country will shortly fall into the abyss. Every time someone points out the billions and billions we taxpayers are forced to spend someone always comes up with a sob story. Their’s a sob story for everyone. Sob stories are like opinions, everybody’s got one. (Cleaned that one up). It seems there are millions of sob stories all feeding at the public trough. Pretty soon we’ll sob story ourselves into bankruptcy, because the rest of us will not have anymore money to give for the millions and millions of unfortunate souls. I have a better idea. Why don’t you pay for your daughter during her time of need, and I will pay for mine when she is in need. This way we both will not have to ask our neighbors to pay for it.

In seven months, she has only been offered two (60 to 90 day) no Benefits Temp positions making half of what she gets from Unemployment.

With Obamacare looming, her age (yes it is an issue) and our living in CA, chances are things will only get worse. On top of that we are paying $1300 a Month for COBRA coverage.

We just found out that her Unemployment stops in a month, (along with about 400,000 others) so things will be much more difficult. The good news is that I can raid what’s left of my Retirement Savings without fear of a 12.5% Federal and State penalty because I’ll be 59 and a half the end of January.

The bad news is, the Company I work for as a 1099 Contract Employee is slowly sinking beneath the waves. My hours are being reduced in the meantime.

As my Dear Mother always said, there are always going to be people better off than you and there are always going to be people worse of than you, that’s life. (Unless you’re an Obama sycophant that is)

I just say $hit Happens. If it doesn’t, just Elect Obama and it will happen for sure. After all, 64 Million Useful Idiots can’t be wrong.

How many of them should be out there sweeping sidewalks, mowing parks and mopping city hall for these checks?

you know, i support this idea -- strongly support it

But I've never been in such a position that needed to take in welfare checks. When I last moved and was without a job for 2 months I even contemplated doing something like that (I'm an engineer so jobs are a bit easier to get) to add to the family kitty, but got a job in my field before this

Has any freeper been in such a position -- I would like to give examples to any leftists I know. Don't have to be names, just notes to tell people.

I support the idea that if you want unemployment benefits you gotta to something -- can be small, as you say, or helping old people or something. And also the idea that you gotta spend 1 year helping out the nation in some way -- could be enlisting, could be helping the old, working in small towns etc. and THEN you get the right to vote -- earn the right to vote

18
posted on 12/03/2012 12:06:42 AM PST
by Cronos
(**Marriage is about commitment, cohabitation is about convenience.**)

These are not professional employees. Don't try to understand the way the others think. That's why they're hanging out in bars spending their unemployment checks. P.S., they almost universally think Republicans are eeeevil.

21
posted on 12/03/2012 7:07:16 AM PST
by andyk
(I have sworn...eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.)

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